Updated the ol’ t-shirt shop with some new designs finally, for anyone interested in that. A bunch of the designs now use a better quality of printing, so they should last longer than the average made-to-order internet shirt.

And: a few new prints are available in the prints store as well– including the 5th anniversary comic, which you can see a picture of right here (it’s fancied up a bit from the version on the site, so you can at least see what it looks like here):

Just a huge Thanks, by the way, to anyone who’s supported This Here Comix Thing by buying some of the aforementioned Stuff. It’s a Big Deal to me to sell any merchandise at all, so thanks indeed for pitching in. You with the donations as well– holy flurking shnit, your generosity is quite vastly appreciated. Huge, huge thanks in your direction for sure.

Second-lastly

I was Busier Than Usual the past month or so, and would like to apologize to anyone who emailed me and didn’t get a reply. I’ve generally been on top of the ol’ personal correspondence, but not lately, so apologies to anyone who didn’t get a reply or a thank you from me, and i’ll say Thanks now to you and anyone else who writes in because i most assuredly get some obscenely kind emails and am really rather very extremely grateful for that indeed.

Lastly and so not Leastly

Without going on and on about it as we’ve all read the news articles at this point, i do want to at least acknowledge the horrid and untimely death of Adam Yauch, a really fine artist who was most definitely an influence on me. He showed How It’s Done: how you can start your artistic career as one thing and then evolve into something far more sophisticated without actually losing your sense of humor, and he said things about the world that needed to be heard, and he was remembered above all as just a good human being, and that’s always been something to aspire to, if not the only thing. So cheers, MCA. I would have worked a proper tribute to you into the comic, but it takes place in hell, and if there were a hell you would be a million miles from it.

“I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/

The disrespect to women has got to be through/

To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends/

I offer my love and respect to the end.”

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This entry was posted on May 12, 2012 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Also, Subnormality.

56 Responses to “mini-golf hell”

I think I understand some of this, which is more than I thought I would.

-Comically Brief Lifespan: There’s all these awesome things you can do in your life, but you’re going to punch your ticket before you get all of them.

-Cronyism: If you’re an outsider, you go through all these contortions and perfectly timed shots, get to the end through skill and blind luck, and you’ll be blocked by a glass wall.
Meanwhile, the insiders have the same goal and much less required effort. And hell, if they fudge a few things, it’s a’ight. They’re one of the boys.

-False Duality: The “Ideal” roles of each gender, completely unattainable. A Subnormality classic.
Query what the players looked like before they took the shot.

-Self-Doubt: The more you doubt yourself, the harder it is. And it’s a feedback loop. In five more seconds, that windmill is going to rip free of its foundation and tear through the the Deliberate VS Random course.

-DvsR: You can make all the plans you like, but there’s a bunch of random crap in life that you can’t account for. I see bad weather, car accidents, plane crashes, and a (Squints) …a broken rubber?

-Hollywood: Seemingly the easiest course, it is simply impossible for a ball to retain its original motion, direction, and verve as it passes between the Hollywood executives. And if it does pass through, it was probably soulless to begin with.

-Regrets of the Dying: That picnic represents the ideal, what that woman wishes she could have done, but her lifestyle and mindset (Workaholic?) made it impossible until it was too late.
As someone who rather enjoys the corporate atmosphere, can’t quite connect with this one as much as the others.
And no, I’m not a jack-booted corporate thug. Company dress code restricts us to armbands.

-But I Saw It On A TV Show: A course reserved for idiots who died while doing something they saw on TV, like believing that proper gun safety is keeping your finger on the trigger, or that it is perfectly safe and acceptable to stick a handgun in your waistband without flipping the safety.

Currently out of order, as Management realized that smashing TVs with rubber balls or golf clubs is actually a stress reliever.

-The Summary: The only course that can be ‘won’, one simply putts the ball into funnel, at which point a college education and a well-planned career carry you comfortably through life until you expire, at which point you are buried and… um… reincarnation happens and… right back at it?

Overall, one of my favorites, expect to see it as a poster in the near future. And as there is, sadly, a dearth of pages and paragraphs of text, I have felt the call to address that oversight.

I interpreted the “But I Saw It On A TV Show” course as people saying “Well I never went on that adventure/lived my dream, but I saw someone else do it on a screen.” The fact that the hole only exists in a TV means that you can’t really win that way,It’s physicly impossible to put a ball in the picture of a screen as it is impossible to live through a screen.

Thank ye kindly, rasquirelaskar. There were a few there that I didn’t understand, and your post certainly helped fill in the gap.

Seeing the photo of that poster made me really realize something – the format of this comic really is not very book-friendly. Which is a real shame, as I would absolutely love to have a collected copy of it in book format some day.

Hm. No…still doesn’t make any sense. Malmö is currently known for two things only outside of Sweden, and that is the segregation between muslims and jews (jews fleeing the county and prefering Israel to the threating conditions for jews in Malmö these past few years) and the extremely high crime rates in general and murder rates in particular.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore Malmö in a lot of ways, but it’d hardly fit on anyone’s “to do”-list, unless they’re really serious about falafel and halloumi.

Yeah, c’mon, it’s overall a pretty lovely city is it not? To one who grew up in Saskatchewan, its old buildings are majestic, its food is wondrous, its castle is Awesome, its Turning Torso is way cool, and its bike/pedestrian-focused downtown is a model that canadian cities are unfortunately too stupid to copy. I dunno, i like it, is all.

Well I do agree that Malmö gets more slag in the worldwide media in general and swedish media in particular than it deserves. It has it’s upsides and downsides I guess; I’ve found myself pondering what my true feelings of what has now been my new home town for the past five years really are, and whereas they used to lean towards the more negative side, I’ve lately grown rather fond of it.

And you’re right about the food! I suppose it’s because Copenhagen, centre of the culinary world right now, is right across the Öresundsbridge just twenty minutes away; somehow the creativity and ambition has spirited across the strait.

Well, pardon my ramblings, I suppose it was just a kick that one of the few drawers of comics I’ve come to appreciate fondly not only mentioned Malmö but actually has visited.

I didn’t love this, i kinda felt that the various messages in this are not very well delivered, and is stuff that Rowntree’s already covered in much better comics, but the sheer fucking scope of it is bloody incredible!

Do you mind elaborating on what you thought was poorly-delivered? I don’t really get as much constructive criticism as i’d like (watch the floodgates open now…), so if you wanted to go into more detail i’d be appreciative. I have no interest from not learning from my failures.

i don’t know, i guess just that the execution wasn’t very subtle. Usually when you have something to say you build up to it over one long comic, which i personally find much more satisfying. This just felt a little too simple, i guess? kinda felt like the comic equivalent of you just simply saying the statements that you were conveying. also i didn’t really get what these mini-golf courses were doing in hell, kinda like the people are being punished for having misinformed expectations about life rather than actually being bad people, although that’s a small complaint.

and again, the sheer scale of this is awesome, god-damn your comics are so much fun just to look at.

Hmm, I feel like what Leo says is true in that this is much simpler and more blatant than your build-to-a-moment-of-catharsis comics, but at the same time, I like that you don’t only do comix that are mega emotionally involving. I haven’t caught up with your comix since February, I’ve been going through the ones since your Valentines one all in a row tonight, and reading them all next to each other in time I was a bit overwhelmed by the emotional magnitude of the past few. I LOVE that emotional magnitude! But I also am relieved that you have shit which is less gut-rending-heart-wrenching.

The ancient Greek Dionysia cycles had three tragedies and one comedy. I’m fucking down with that.

Oh, but even your less emotionally investing comix these days are often very intricate! This one certainly is marvelously detailed; I feel like your planning and layout are improving as you experiment. I like how you play with the general transit of up-left-to-down-right a lot.

You know, I didn’t think of it until I noticed I’d referenced Greek drama twice in this post, but something about your work definitely strikes me as having, like, this spark of similarity to the old dramatists. I don’t know quite how to explain it; if you asked me to derive a list of your influences just from reading your work, though, I’d put Sophocles way up there.

My mom’s from Malmo, and yeah i most definitely like it there. They have bike infrastructure instead of bike helmets, and there’s a tangible feeling of greater gender equality than what we have in north america, and i really, really like that feeling.

It felt like a shotgun blast of pompousness. Tone it down; focus less on ironic ideas (true though they are) and more on how they affect people. The best thing about your comic isn’t the message, it’s the characters. They have a wonderful subtlety about them, as if they’re getting as much out of the comic as we are, even as we read it! Take each of those mini golf courses for example, they could have been completely brilliant comics in their own right. Especially the hollywood and self-doubt ones. This shotgunning of ironies is perfect for a poster type comic, but i’m really missing the more personal type comics of which you’ve done a lot and with great success.

Cheers, eh– that is some extremely valuable feedback and i very much appreciate you taking the time. And you say it was hard to write, but believe me when i say no-one should be afraid to offer such criticism when it’s exactly what an artist needs sometimes. All i have to go on is my instincts otherwise, and they’re a bit, uh, mercurial at times.

That looks like my idea of mini-golf heaven! I want to try the self-doubt one and the oblivion.
In serious-tone, though, WR, I kind of agree with some of the comments. It does feel as if there’s a tad too much going on and perhaps that makes some of the issues you cover look a little simplified? The only reason I didn’t find them overly confusing is because you’ve covered them all brilliantly already. Still, wonderous art, as per bloody usual you magnificent bastard.

Well this seem like a “to review in brief” poster of some of your well loved messages. The only problem i have with a comic designed to be a wall hanging is that there are so few poster shops left and a poster delivered by THE POST (speaking as an employ here) is a pain to deliver and a crushed cardboard tube to receive. Perhaps you might print them on beach towels, or for the more discerning consumer have your comics painstakingly stitched into a quilt by exploited 3rd world sweat shop kids. The irony or swaddling oneself in your uplifting message while being oblivious to the medium would be amusing.

Sorry, I will be unable to offer you any constructive criticism or praise. In fact, me leaving a comment at all is absolutely pretentious on my part, as it isn’t going to offer you anything. Actually I’m writing this down for myself because I need to somehow react to what I’ve seen. Consider me another random internet parasite.

I have rarely seen so much brilliance in one place. It’s ALWAYS… truthfull while being funny in a very sad and uplifting kind of way. I cannot even accurately describe your work as it looks like a whole new form of art to me (yeah, I know, “Comix with too many words since 2007”). Have been reading your stuff for hours now.

Imagine, if you will, Adolf Hitler never rising to political power and instead spending his short and uneventful life as a fourth-class painter hardly making any sales and thus surviving mostly on a meager heritage, painfully aware that he was born with just one testicle. His brain is an incoherent stew as he struggles to understand anything but realizes he is doomed to be either ignorant, neurotic and boring or ignorant, pyschotic and very harmful to other people. Since he is living in isolation and his life is really slow-paced, he has found at least some time to think and somewhat outgrow certain feaverish certitudes, so that he is now floating in a realm of generalized, undirected anxiety and self-loathing. And for some reason the internet has been invented a lot earlier in this timeline so one day he comes across a cartoon much like yours, and after a few hours of reading he’s somewhat feeling like me.

Can’t figure out how to email you so I’ll put this here – just a request. If you’re up for it, put your T-shirts on Topatoco, I’d be more willing to buy them then.. I can see you have your prints there already.